The Mill Magazine Edition 12 No. 1 Influencers + Creatives

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E D I T I O N 1 2 N O . 1

Influencers+Creatives PUBLISHER MarketStyleMedia EDITOR IN CHIEF TraceyRoman COMMUNITY EDITOR AubreyDucane CONTRIBUTING WRITERS ElleChristensen CandaceMattingly JenMcConnel BriceJacobson EleftheriosSoleas PHOTOGRAPHERS MikaBaumeister LauraChouette MaddiBazzocco GeorgiaDeLotz IbrahimBoran JoshuaRawsonHarris ADVERTISING ad.sales@themillmagazine.com 803-619-0491 ©2021 THE MILL MAGAZINE. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. NO PART OF THIS PUBLICATION MAY BE REPRODUCED IN ANY FORM WITHOUT THE EXPRESS WRITTEN CONSENT OF THE COPYRIGHT OWNER. THE MILL MAGAZINE DOES NOT NECESSARILY ENDORSE THE VIEWS AND PERCEPTIONS OF ADVERTISERS.

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COVER ART BY ASHLEY PROCTOR

eatures F T

p.18

SOCIAL MEDIA

FAIRYLAND

KILLING YOUR

CONFIDENCE?

p.307 Top

Influencers Making a Mark in the Queen City 19 Creatives

p.44

POP

Against the Charlotte Skyline

p.58 Local

Foodies We Follow

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ON TH E

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Dr. Teresa T. Mercado, DDS, FICOI with her French Bulldog, Boomer

803-547-7779 | 1515 ONYX RIDGE, SUITE 108, FORT MILL, SC 29708 | MONARCHDENTISTRYOFGOLDHILL.COM

SOCIAL MEDIA

FAIRYLAND KILLING YOUR

CONFIDENCE? Text.by.Eleftherios Soleas and Jen McConnel

I

f social media was a person, you’d probably avoid them.

Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are loaded with pictures of people going to exotic places, looking like they are about to be on the cover of Vogue, and otherwise living a fairy-tale existence.

And, like all fairy tales, these narratives feel a lot like fiction.

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Sometimes faking it on Instagram is just fine. Photo by Joshua Rawson Harris.

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Photo by Georgia de Lotz.

Photo by Mika Baumeister.

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When you compare the “projected reality” to your lived experience, it would be easy to conclude that you do not measure up. Research shows that young adults are especially vulnerable to this phenomenon.

We have also studied this trend in graduate students, our next generation of scholars: they too, implicitly compare themselves to their peers, sometimes automatically. We’re socially trained to do this as shown by a litany of research studies exploring our relationships with others projected images.

These implicit comparisons can threaten your innate psychological needs: autonomy, competence and relatedness. Not just one of them. ALL OF THEM. And such comparisons have shifted life online towards an unwinnable competition.

We are outnumbered and out-posted by other people and it can make us feel unequivocally terrible if we let it. It’s never been easier to be insecure about ourselves and our achievements thanks to the ever-present torrent of “updates” posted by mostly well-meaning people seeking opportunities for connection and validation.

WHERE DID THIS COME FROM? Social media fills our days, but it hasn’t always. In fact, the birth of sites and apps like the micro-blogging platform Tumblr (2007), the bite-sized conversation builder Twitter (2006) and star-studded Instagram (2010) all arrived on the technology scene in tandem with the e-book revolution. And yet, in just over a decade, these tools have exploded across our browsers, into our phones and onto our self-perceptions.

People appear to be spending an hour a day on various social media apps, which doesn’t sound too rough if we assume everyone is only using one app.

However, the tendency for younger users to embrace multiple social media

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apps (and to access their accounts multiple times a day) is increasing.

What that means for many of us is that we are spending hours each day connected and consuming content, from short tweets to beautifully staged #bookstagram images to painstakingly crafted selfies that sometimes make it seem like our friends are living the glamorous life, even when they’re waking up before dawn to take care of their little ones.

Social media presences are not inherently fake, but some people interacting in these spaces feel pressure to perform. And that’s not always bad!

As argued by Amy Cuddy, sometimes it’s helpful to pretend we are who we want to be in order to give ourselves the confidence to grow into our futures.

There’s a rich history to “acting as if ” in spiritual and growth-oriented spaces. But there’s a line between “fake it till you become it” and spending the afternoon shooting awkward photos to gain more “likes.”

DARK POINT OF THE SOUL After conducting about 60 interviews and 2,500 surveys across two ongoing studies of post-secondary students, the findings indicate that being constantly compared to other people can demolish our confidence quickly.

For example, one first-year PhD student told us: “I feel like a failure because I don’t have any papers out and I haven’t won a major scholarship like the rest of my lab group.” A first-year student?!

Another commented: “All my peers are better than me, why am I even here?”

These are high-performing thinkers, and yet their confidence is being steamrolled in part because social media does not facilitate fair comparisons.

We wish these experiences were unique to certain contexts, but they are

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Being constantly compared to other people is not good for us. Photos by Laura Chouette.

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Party goers spending more time posting photos to social media than interacting with other guests. Photo by Ibrahim Boran.

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ubiquitous. We’ve become so used to seeing the world through social media that we give it false equivalence with our lived experience. We implicitly compare our lives against the sensation of social media and consider it a fair contention.

Of course, the mundane doesn’t measure up to social media. Social media posts need to be epic to be shared.

Hardly anyone posts a “meh” status update; our social media posts are typically at one extreme or another, good or bad, and we are left to compare our individual realities with an exceptional anecdote devoid of context. It’s all of the sugar, with none of the fiber.

IT’S NOT ALL A PIT OF DESPAIR Despite this relatively grim picture, the way we’re performing on social media isn’t entirely destructive. For starters, the awareness that we all seem to have about the inauthentic presentations of people’s lives that we consume online (and the painful comparisons that often follow) has also spawned subversively creative acts of satire.

One example comes from “It’s Like They Know Us,” a blog/book/parenting subculture that’s built around taking stock images of families and providing captions that poke fun of the impossible standards these images perpetuate.

And articles like the recent “How to Become Instagram Famous Experiment” remind us all that behind the carefully cultivated images rests a series of failed attempts and sometimes ridiculous efforts to capture the perfect shot.

There’s a perverse kind of creativity that our image-saturated web presence has spawned. And as often as we fall into the destructive cycle of comparing our messy, authentic lives to the snapshots of perfection that we see online,

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Photo by Maddi Bazzocco.

we just as often step back and laugh at how silly it all is.

Perhaps we’re merely playing along; isn’t it fun to think, just for a moment, that somewhere out there, someone is really living their best life? And maybe, just maybe, if we arrange our books in an artful composition or capture a stunning selfie on the 10th attempt, maybe we will be able to see the beauty that exists in each of our imperfectly messy, chaotic, authentic realities beyond the picture.

Maybe it’s good for us to “act as if,” as long as we remember that the content we share and engage with online is only a fraction of our real stories.

Remember, even fairy tales have a grain of truth.

aM T M T H E M I L L M AG A Z I N E

Eleftherios Soleas is the Adjunct Assistant Professor of Education at Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada.

Jen McConnel is the Assistant Professor of English Education at Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada. She is a teacher-researcher and writer. She is a former ELA teacher with a decade of classroom experience, and her work focuses on supporting teachers across contexts. Her research interests include academic writing, children’s and young adult literature, and the uses of metaphor in teaching and writing. This article was originally published on The Conversation.

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Welcome to a 21st century preschool.

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7 Top Influencers Making a Mark in the Queen City Te x t . b y. B r i c e . J a c o b s o n

W

hat makes Charlotte so fresh and lively?

The people who live here, of course!

There’s an abundance of talent here, but seven individuals are rising to the top as influencers.

What is an influencer, you ask? Well, an influencer is someone with a growing following or audience on one or more social media platforms with which they engage and can affect the purchasing decisions of.

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Influencers 32

The number of followers you need to be considered an influencer varies depending on the type of niche or topics you cover. Mega influencers have more than 1 million followers. Those with 40,000 to 1 million followers are considered macro-influencers, but most fall into the micro-influencer range which is 1,000 to 40,000 followers.

Having fewer than 1,000 followers in a specialty niche is classified as a nano-influencer.

Influencers create content and take photographs to engage and build an audience. They also do this in hopes of acquiring paid collaborations.

Influence.co surveyed 1,140 influencers (with a following between 5,000 and 1 million) to find out how they are interacting with brands, making money, and conducting their business. They found that 45% of those surveyed are contacted at least 4 times a month about a collaboration or campaign. According to 83% of the influencers, less than half of the brands offer cash for their participation. And, 78% said they had posted sponsored content without being paid.

Most influencers put in more time at “influencer work” than they do for their day job. The average influencer spends at least 4 hours daily creating content and photography, with another 3 hours spent on checking emails and social media interactions.

We researched the most searchable topics in our area and the trends that locals follow. Then, we crunched the data to determine who the top influencers are in the greater Charlotte market. We present them here in order of their overall reach along with their specialties.

THEMILLMAGAZINE.COM•EDITION 12 NO. 1•INFLUENCERS + CREATIVES

Melissa Gundersen

@prouddogmom | 2.3M Reach Dogs | Dog Food | Pets & Animals | Dog Supplies | Dog Mom prouddogmom.com

Photo courtesy of @prouddogmom.

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Mckenna Bleu

@mckennableu | 263k Reach Beauty | Fashion | Home Decorating | Lifestyle | Blogger mckennableu.com

Photo courtesy of @mckennableu.

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@bucketlisttummy_rd | 51.3k Reach Fitness | Health and Wellness | Nutrition | Running | Travel bucketlisttummy.com

Photo courtesy of @bucketlisttummy_rd.

Influencers

Sarah Schlichter

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Influencers 36

Colin Joliat

@boozist | 27.8k Reach Beer | Spirits | Whisky | Cocktails | Food And Drinks boozist.com

Photo courtesy of @boozist.

THEMILLMAGAZINE.COM•EDITION 12 NO. 1•INFLUENCERS + CREATIVES

Brittney Arena

@reverieandink | 18.9k Reach Books | Home Decorating | Jewelry | Lifestyle | Clothing brittneyarena.com

Photo courtesy of @reverieandink.

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Leigh Thomas Brown

@leighthomasbrown | 12.4k Reach Speaking | Business | Real Estate | Coach | Writing leighbrown.com

Photo courtesy of @leighthomasbrown.

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@aaron_dodge | 7.6k Reach Dance | Video Production | Workout Clothes | Fitness | Vegan aarondodge.com

Photo courtesy of @aaron_dodge.

a TMM T H E M I L L M AG A Z I N E

Influencers

Aaron Dodge

Brice Jacobson, a Charlotte native, is a freelance writer with an affinity for technology, food, and beer. He is often spotted in SouthEnd on a scooter.

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' SHOP, EAT, and DISCOVER . . . LOCAL EVENTS

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KEIKO MATSUI

APR 25, 2021

McGlohon Theater at Spirit Square blumenthalarts.org

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THEMILLMAGAZINE.COM•EDITION 12 NO. 1•INFLUENCERS + CREATIVES

SHOP, EAT, and DISCOVER . . . LOCAL BUSINESSES

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p.

29 p.40 p.43 p.57 p.67 p.68 p.70 p.

Burns Cadillac 800.424.0852 burnscadillac.com Providence Chiropractic 803.835.0444 providence-chiropractic.com Tilmor 1.844.255.5864 tilmor.com ArtPop Street Gallery charlotte, nc artpopstreetgallery.com The Trailer Store 704.996.1998 thetrailerstore.online Travel Like Tracy 704.709.2090 travelliketracy.com Monarch Dentistry Of Gold Hill 803.547.7779 monarchdentistryofgoldhill.com Frick Trent Lizzio Real Estate Attorneys 704.376.8181 Charlotte 803.324.4000 Fort Mill / Rock Hill fricktrentlizzio.com

Everbrook Academy 866.222.0269 everbrookacademy.com Blumenthal Performing Arts 704.372.1000 blumenthalart.org DCI Home Resource 704.926.6000 dcihomeresource.com Blackhawk Hardware 704.525.2682 blackhawkhardware.com Palmetto Eye 803.985.2020 palmetto-eye.com Made In The Mill 803.619.0491 madeinthemill.com ArtPop Street Gallery charlotte, nc artpopstreetgallery.com

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Dolce Lusso Salon & Spa 803.802.5877 baxter village 704.542.6550 stonecrest 980.859.2783 park road 803.802.5000 kingsley dolcelusso.com

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SHOP•EAT•DISCOVER

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'

EXPLORETHE THEMILL.COM COM INFLUENCERS + CREATIVES•EDITION 12 NO. 1•THEMILLMAGAZINE.COM

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CHARACTER

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Texture

inspiring small town culture

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19 Creatives

POP

Against the Charlotte Skyline Te x t . b y . E l l e . C h r i s t e n s e n

E

ach year in Charlotte, ArtPop Street Gallery sends out an open call asking community artists to submit a digital, billboard-ready image for consideration to their program. ArtPop’s jury of professional artists, gallery owners, executives, and community leaders review each submission and select the artists who will make up the ArtPop Class for the year.

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Photo courtesy of ArtPop Street Gallery.

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The new class is revealed during a special celebration where each new artist receives a miniature billboard of their new public art project. Then, the ArtPop partners do the magic of spreading art to the community on billboards, newsstands, and digital boards throughout the city.

Each jury selects one Senior High School student for inclusion in the class. Student artists receive a scholarship to a collegiate art program and the support of the entire ArtPop community. Starting in 2019, ArtPop partnered with ArtistsU to provide artists with the tools and resources they need to make a professional living. ArtPop’s Business of Art workshops teach the ins and outs of small business ownership from the artists’ perspective.

ArtPop Street Gallery is a 501c3 nonprofit organization that showcases local artists by featuring their art in public spaces and equipping them to achieve sustained success. ArtPop makes art accessible to all people in the communities they serve because everyone deserves access to art. ArtPop does this in two ways, through Cities Programs and Inspiration Projects. In the Cities Programs, ArtPop makes local artists household names and creates city-sized street galleries through space like billboards and more. The Inspiration Projects work through generous commissions with corporate partners to create paid opportunities for artists while creating public art projects for all to enjoy.

Meet the new 2021 class representing ArtPop Charlotte.

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THEMILLMAGAZINE.COM•EDITION 12 NO. 1•INFLUENCERS + CREATIVES

Greg Barnes

@gbarnesstudios | barnesstudios.com

Creatives Jesse carkin

@carkinarts | jessecarkin.wixsite.com/carkinarts

Ella Mackinson @ellaraewyn | ellaraewyn.squarespace.com

Photos courtesy of ArtPop Street Gallery.

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Creatives Mary Zio @mzioartist | maryzio.com

Katherine Heilig @_klhdesigns

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Mikel Frank @mikelfranksart | mikelfrank.net

Kenny Nguyen @kennynguyenclt | kennynguyen.org

Photos courtesy of ArtPop Street Gallery.

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Molly Partyka @mollypartyka | mollypartyka.com

rob Webb

@webb_robb | webbstudioimages.com

Photos courtesy of ArtPop Street Gallery.

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Creatives sara Simmons @sarasimmons.art | sarasimmons.net

Tim Petrinec @timpetrinec | timpetrinec.com

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Creatives Caroline rust @caroline_rust_art | carolinerust.com

adam Jochim @pitchandburl | pitchandburl.com

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Aletha Buck

@ajbphotostudio | ajbphotographystudio.com

Ashley Proctor @robotmuseart | robotmuseart.com

Photos courtesy of ArtPop Street Gallery.

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Dylan bannister @dylanbannisterart | dylanbannister.com

Cat Babbie @catbmakes | catbabbie.com

Photos courtesy of ArtPop Street Gallery.

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Creatives David Bulfin @bulfin | bulfin.co

Christina Cobb @christinacobbart | christinacobbart.com

a TMM T H E M I L L M AG A Z I N E

Elle Christensen is a freelance writer with many interests that take her near and far, but her home in Waxhaw, NC is her favorite place to be.

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CHARACTER

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Provisions

inspiring small town flavors + shopping

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WE PROVIDE THE EQUIPMENT. It’s up to you to use it right.

Locally owned and mismanaged since 1977. blackhawkhardware.com

Panca Street Food photographed by @finer_with_thyme.

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Local

Foodies We Follow Te x t b y C a n d a c e . M a t t i n g l y

I

f you want to know where the best local eateries are or you (like me) really enjoy seeing beautiful food images in your feed, you will definitely want to follow these foodies for both. We like to see real people with a real passion for yummy food. Local people who seek out the best our community has to offer.

Our favorite foodies share their unsolicited experiences at the best ‘mom and pop’ establishments in the city.

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Local Foodie @lifeatcharlotte 1,058 followers

Nairitya started @lifeatcharlotte September 2020.

Top left to right, Good Drip Coffee, Peppervine CLT, and Napa On Providence photographed by @lifeatcharlotte.

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es We Follow @foodwinechickie 1,962 followers

Veronique started @foodwinechickie in 2009.

Top left to right, Jekyll & Hyde Taphouse, The Everyday Market, and Haymaker CLT photographed by @foodwinechickie.

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Local Foodie @ashaeatsworld 1,175 followers

Asha started @ashaeatsworld July 2012.

ASHA EATS

WORLD

Top left to right, Ruby Sunshine Brunch, Bulla Gastrobar, Juicy Crab CLT photographed by @ashaeatsworld.

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es We Follow @goodeatsinclt 1.904 followers

Sarah started @goodeatsinclt March 2019.

Top left to right, Suarez Bakery and Barra, Wentworth and Fenn, and Link & Pin NC photographed by @goodeatsinclt.

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Local Foodie @fatkidsclt 141 followers

Ehron + Kari started @fatkidsclt September 2017.

FAT KIDS CLT Top left to right, Pump House Rock Hill, Que Onda Tacos Uptown, and Zukku Sushi CLT photographed by @fatkidsclt.

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es We Follow @finer_with_thyme 1.568 followers

Karen started @finer_with_thyme April 2019.

Top left to right, Mad Dash Food, Good Food CLT, and Panca Street Food photographed by @finer_with_thyme.

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Local Foodie @queeneatz_ 114 followers

Sharee started @queeneatz_ October 2020.

Top left to right, Fern Flavors, Mike’s Vegan Cookout, and Cuzzos Cuisine photographed by @queeneatz_.

aM T M

Candace Mattingly is a freelance writer living in North Carolina with her husband, twin boys, and three rescue dogs.

T H E M I L L M AG A Z I N E

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e Dr. Paul Burt, OD and Dr. Melissa Wood, OD

2460 INDIA HOOK RD, SUITE 206, ROCK HILL, SC 29732 | 803-985-2020 | PALMETTO-EYE.COM

Let's work together to protect, foster, and strengthen the local independent businesses that make Think, buy, our and source community unique.

LOCAL. MADEINTHEMILL.COM

2021 Charlotte Artist Aletha Buck

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ArtPopStreetGallery.com